RESIDENTS were dealt a double-blow after two beloved town-centre restaurants shut on the exact same day.
Peterborough locals were left gutted as the pair of popular venues closed for good in the Cambridgeshire city on Sunday, March 23.
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Pizza chain Franco Manca had announced it would close its outlet in the heart of the bustling town after three years.
The popular restaurant had taken over the site, on the corner of a busy street, from an opticians in the summer of 2022.
Now, with Franco Manca departing, fast food chain Wingstop is expected to establish its first store in the commuter town.
However, there does not appear to be a proposed opening date for the new fried chicken shop.
It was not the only store to close on March 23, as casual dining chain Harvester closed its outlet in Alwalton on the edge of the city.
But it’s not all negative news, as the site will be undergoing substantial refurbishment and redevelopment in order to reopen as a Miller & Carter steakhouse.
The project has created more than 20 jobs and is due to be complete in May, reports Peterborough Today.
This comes just weeks after Forza Win, located in London’s Camberwell, made the sad announcement it would be closing.
In a post online a spokesperson said: “It’s been 12 years! Five as a supper club, seven as a restaurant, two of which we’ve spent on Camberwell Church Street,” bosses revealed last month.
They added: “We’ve had the immense privilege of working on over a decade of Forza Win in its many iterations and couldn’t be prouder of what who has been part of it has achieved.
“All of that said, we couldn’t be more excited for what’s to come.
“We’ve spent the best part of a decade trying to explain that Forza Win and Forza Wine are two different things (that ‘e’ doing a lot of heavy lifting) – now it’s only Forza Wine you need to remember, and we’ll be slinging cauliflower fritti and custardos in more postcodes very soon.
“And where Camberwell is concerned, we’ve found someone lovely to take over the space and serve the community – more on that soon.”
TROUBLE ON THE HIGH STREET
Plenty of other retailers are closing stores across the high street as households lean more towards online shopping and amid high business rates.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Carpetright, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, Paperchase, Ted Baker, The Body Shop, Topshop and Wilko to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
Soaring inflation in recent years has also dented shoppers’ pockets.
The Centre for Retail Research’s latest analysis suggests 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut for good in 2024.
Of those, 11,341 were independent shops while 2,138 were shut by larger retailers.
The data also showed over half the stores that closed last year were shut due to the store or retailer going through insolvency proceedings.
This is when formal measures are taken to deal with tackling a business’s debt.
Retailers are also shutting stores in 2025.
New Look is ramping up a store closure programme ahead of April’s National Insurance hike.
Approximately a quarter of the retailer’s 364 stores are at risk when their leases expire.
This equates to about 91 stores, with a significant impact on its 8,000-strong workforce.
What is happening to the hospitality industry?
By Laura McGuire, consumer reporter